Two kids, two full time careers - lots of people do it gracefully, but for me it's a challenge, particularly as I struggle with my boy, the rooster, and his "constellation" of health and developmental issues. Medicine so far fails to cure what ails us, so I'm trying a self-prescribed intensive dose of blogging to see if that does the trick.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Random

Some random stuff is running around the gerbil wheel I carry on top of my neck. Ready for random? Here we gooooooooooooooooooooooo....

Frustration one: The first week in January I splurged and hired a personal trainer. A cheap one -- I got a deal. It's the second week of February and I've gained two pounds. Do not dare talk to me about "muscles versus fat." I'm serious. Do NOT do that. I usually publish all comments, even if I disagree, but this time I give you warning...

I told my husband that first my fancy blue tooth device disappeared from my car and now my phone charger, and I suspected a crook. He scoffed, offered suggestions where I might have forgotten to have put them. Today he got in his car and his charger was gone. We have to start locking our car doors. We had stopped locking one of our cars because, really, would it be so very terrible if someone took that one? (Sorry car, you've been really great all these decades, and we do still love you.) But my blue tooth? That was practically brand new, and pricey, by my standards. (Yes, the standards of a woman who has been driving the same Saturn SL1 -- with manual locks and windows and a cassette player -- since 1996 might not be the same as your standards, but my blue tooth was a Razor, a really good one, and I miss it.)

TMI alert for those who want to stop here. We have a potty trained child! Alas, it's not the Rooster. Peaches, nearly three, makes us proud and a little sad as she passes the rooster on meeting this milestone. So, I've been loathe to go here, again but can someone please explain the potty training thing to me again? Rooster is 4 and 3/4. His IEP is coming in May. We understand that his school placement recommendation is being heavily influenced by not being potty trained yet. The school psychologist asks if the Rooster KNOWS when he needs to go the potty, as in does he get the signals. I think he must, since we all know, we all get the signals around here... he goes to that certain spot in the house when he needs to go. And, more than two years ago, he used the potty chair for the first time a couple of times all by himself. Sometimes we have had some success. But mostly he tells us he does not want to use the potty. He will say nothing more than, "I don't want to." Well, he more than says it, he screams it. Yet, at other times, he expresses frustration and upset that other kids tease him. He has issues about the whole thing... emotional? Psychological? ... that go beyond his ability to verbalize. He brings up potties wayyyyy more often than we do, in all kinds of contexts. His first year in preschool, when he was three, we never used any techniques except encouragement and letting him know to let us know when he was ready. As I said earlier, he had spontaneously had success even before that, so we figured it would be easy. That's when he started telling us that, "Potties are nasty." We let that ride and hoped he'd get ready in his own time. When he started round two of preschool this year, we bought every program you can name, read every book, got him books, got him videos, tried sticker charts, implemented rewards... nothing. Now we have a ABA person on the job. The first night of trying it, SUCCESS! We thought, "Well, here we go!" Almost a month later, we've not made much headway. We have tried ten trillion tactics, and I've done mighty mountains of laundry. I just can't wrap my mind around what the issue is for him. I know, I know... you can tell me all kinds of wisdom about how this too shall pass and not to force things and how hard it is for him to process a jillion things and the need for control and on and on... I'm just still stuck wondering about how his mind works and how to HELP him. I know... I hear you... but still. I'm stuck. I want... I wish... you know? I mean... if only... and with school... and socialization? And.... you know? I mean, I know you know... I know, you're right... but... and...

Did anyone else read that depressing book about the boy who loved windows? And if so does anyone recall that exceptionally weird part about how she learned to massage her kids palate and then he miraculously potty trained himself practically overnight? Makes absolutely no sense. But I've been trying to get my finger inside Rooster's mouth lately... your desperate bloggy friend, signing off.

6 comments:

Rubbing the palate? I am going to try it on my constipated 12-year-old, just in case it has some merit.

Both my boys were in their late fourth years when they finally stopped needing pullups (at least during the day). For Rocky, it was because he wore nothing but a Packers Brett Favre uniform every day for several months -- when he found out that Brett didn't wear a pullup, he switched to underoos and toilet use. I can't even remember what got Taz to use the toilet, but I know it was not the result of the gazillion strategies I tried. In fact, I'm pretty sure he waited until I surrendered all hope.

2) potty training: dude, i have zero answers. Zero. That & sleep training. I don't know what the hell I'm doing in either respect. I think the only thing that comes up is that when he feels he's ready, he'll do it. Noah was pee trained at 4.5 & poop trained at 5.5. So it took him a long time, but I really put it off a LOT longer than I should have.

I remember when Oliver was Rooster's age and I had really reached the end with this potty thing. But somehow we got through it. We still refer to Oliver's fourth year as The Year of The Poop! I remember that the book: What You Can Do Right Now to Help Your Child with Autism was really helpful to me. After I read that something shifted in the way I approached at lot of things -- potty training in particular.

Whenever I huff at my son for asking me to change the youtube video on the computer for the 100th time, he says, "I'm annoying". I've only said it a couple times and I was mainly joking, but he thinks I'm going to say it every time, lol. Kids.